SONY ANSWERED!!!! PART 2

The previous thread on this subject hit the 150 mark in less than 48 hours so I'm 'reloading' it in case anybody has something more to say on the subject

To summarise I posted a request on Imaging Resource to ask Sony what the discontinuation of the NEX name meant and for clarification of what is happening with the new models. Imaging Resource did ask Sony some of these questions and rather positively we actually got some information back from Sony:

Point 1: we don't call them NEX, we call them ILCE (I guess that's FF ILCE and APS-C ILCE). In the previous thread rsf3127 informed us that 'Ilce' is a rather old-fashioned and unattrative woman's name in portugese-speaking countries!

Point 2: the A5000 is the update to the NEX-3n (with a $100 launch price increase!). It is not a NEX-5 update. This implies that it is not a merge of the two series so a NEX-5 replacement is still theoretically possible

"I can see that there might be some confusion there because some may see the Alpha 5000 designation as being somewhat similar to another 5-series camera, the NEX-5T. However, that's merely coincidental.

"The Alpha 5000 is not the successor to the NEX-5T, in spite of the five in their model names. We realize that the shift from a three to a five in the model number might confuse some, but the Alpha 5000 is the successor to the NEX-3N. If you look at the feature set, the configuration, the control layout, the objective of the design of the model and its target user, the Alpha 5000 is much more consistent with the NEX-3N than it is with the NEX-5T."

Point 3: Sony are still 'commited to A-mount'

Point 4: The NEX name was killed because it became 'too popular' (!) and people were referring to the cameras as NEX instead of Alpha. Sony were concerned that people 'wouldn't realise that there was cross-compatibility between A-mount and E-mount'. This is the direct quote:

"However, the NEX model name prefix seems to have grown in prominence, such that the general public refer to them as NEX cameras instead of Alpha cameras. And therefore there was some concern on our part that they might not be perceived as Alpha cameras.

The model name prefix started to segregate our E-mount cameras from our A-mount cameras," and that was never our intention.

There was also confusion about compatibility. The model name prefix had grown to take on all kinds of significance, and there was concern that consumers could easily misunderstand there to be a lack of compatibility between the two. Our A-mount cameras and E-mount cameras share many cross-compatibility characteristics, yet there was a perception that NEX and Alpha were somehow quite different."

Why couldn't they have said this all three months ago? Well, a few points for finally communicating with us and lots of thanks to Imaging Resource for making them 'fess-up'